Laundry
by WhiteLadyDragon
Summary: Sometimes one brief moment of absent-mindedness is all it takes. Some language and crude humor. A companion fic to "Story Of The Century". L x OC.


_**Disclaimer! **_**All fictional entities featured/ mentioned in this segment belong to Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata; except Erin Blogger, who I made up for the purpose of this fan fiction.**

**Just a stupid little thing that I came up with. Takes place somewhere in the middle of SOTC, and **_**definitely**_** the last time Erin ever does anything nice for L again. *eyeroll* **

**Oh, it's dual POV, too. In third-person, mind you. **

_**LAUNDRY**_

She wants to kill him.

Well, no. "Kill" might be too strong of a word, considering what they go up against every day, have been going up against for these past few months. No, she should give him the biggest atomic wedgie he has ever gotten; she should wedgie him so hard that when she'd be through with him, it would take four rounds of surgery just to pull his underwear out of his butt, plus four rounds of cosmetic surgery to fix his face.

Honestly! What is it with him and his need to dangle unmentionables in her face for Light and all of their friends to behold? She hasn't hated him this much since that incident with the tampons. Or of course, since he'd dragged her into this case. What did she ever do to him?

This time, apparently, it's about screwing up his laundry.

It had started out innocently enough: being laundry day, and with it coming that pang of guilt from having poor Watari pick up after her all the time. Being forced to live with a group of people shouldn't give someone the excuse to get lazy, so she'd endeavored to help him out some, and get her own laundry done, in the meantime.

She has no idea how this happened. It was an honest mistake—a brief moment of absent-mindedness between getting her clothes out of the dryer and tossing a basket's worth of L's shirts into the washer, as she'd decided to help out the old man by starting that load for him. Turns out that she'd been wrong about L's wearing the same white long-sleeved shirt and jeans every day. He actually has a wardrobe full of just that, white long-sleeved shirts and jeans. It looks like something from out of a cartoon, but it's true. She had gotten a nice quick laugh for herself out of it before turning on the machine and prancing out of the room, luxuriating in the smell of clean clothes fresh from the laundry.

Sometimes one brief moment of absent-mindedness is all it takes.

Barely two hours later, she's back in the laundry room on all fours, having it come to her attention that she's missing a pair, and hoping to find it before someone else does (namely, one of the guys; what with the current 7:3 males-to-females ratio, and with two of the females hardly at home during the day, the probability of a guy finding it is…well, too high, and she isn't sure if she could bear the embarrassment).

Perhaps if Watari had come in to give it back to her, it wouldn't have been so bad. He would've at least been a gentleman about it.

But no. Oh, no-no. It has to be _L,_ instead. L, whom she swears to herself sometimes to be the missing link between people and monkeys, and the very last guy on this entire planet that she would want to have handle _anything _of hers, much less her undergarments. He slinks into the room in that crooked way of his with Light trying to tug him back for some reason, judging by the violent rattle of the chain that connects them. She doesn't turn her head to either of them until she feels him looming directly over her.

The first thing she notices is that his shirt is mottled green, which makes her do a double-take. It disturbs her to see him in anything other than a stark white shirt and faded blue jeans.

The second thing she notices is how suspiciously familiar the green staining is.

The third (funny how she notices this last) is that he's got her missing pair of underwear pinched between his thumb and pointer finger by the elastic waistband, like it's the filthiest thing he's ever been forced to handle. Well, technically he handles _everything _this way, but the fact that it's her freaking _underwear _certainly does nothing to make this any better.

"These seemed to have gotten mixed in with my laundry," he explains, so matter-of-factly that she's already thinking about yanking 'em high, while Light stops tugging on the handcuffs, equally appalled. "Women's panties, around size 8. I suspect that these are yours, and also that you had tried to wash my shirts for me when that is Watari's job."

Misa's right. He _is _a pervert. Mentioning that they're size 8 is just squeezing lemon juice into the wound, by this point. She wants to have him need those eight surgeries _so, so badly. _Those eight surgeries to fix him up…or at least, as fixed up as he's ever going to be.

But he's not worth it. Underwear is sacred, and she's not going to stoop to his level.

She settles for snatching it out of his fingers as roughly as she can before shoving him into Light, instead, with all her might. The part about Light stumbling back as well is unintentional; hell, so had been dying all of L's shirts green (even if it would do him some good to have a little color in his attire). But when a guy you don't like, a total creep, is dangling your underwear in your face in front of mixed company, mocking you for messing up his wardrobe, it's difficult to think much of anything else, such as apologies.

He barely even grunts at the gesture, while Light protests, "Hey!"

"Fine! A-and you can suspect that that'll be the last time I ever try to do anything nice for you again, you fucking ungrateful asshole!"

Technically, this had been more to help Watari. But it had been L's laundry, so…yeah.

She storms off with the garment clenched in one fist, the other rubbing her eyes out before the tears can even think about welling up in them. _No no no, don't cry don't cry, don't give him that satisfaction…_

…

Luckily, Light manages to catch them both before they end up in a heap on the floor. All he'd meant to do was give back what was hers. Granted, he would've preferred it if she hadn't tried to wash her clothes with his, or better yet, she'd have left his laundry up to Watari, but he's far from upset about it. So why is _she _getting so upset?

"Ryuzaki, you can't really be that ignorant," groans Light, face slightly red as he pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation. He refuses to dignify what exactly he has just done by describing it to him from his perspective as the bystander. "If you'd have done that to me, I would've broken your nose."

He's not joking. Light _has _tried to break his nose on more than one occasion (prompting him to try to break his jaw in retaliation). But not over something like this.

"I think you owe her an apology."

Perhaps. But not now. He shouldn't attempt to reconcile until after he's allotted her some time to cool off and she no longer looks at him like she wants to shoot him but can't.

For now, he supposes he'll have to wear these green shirts until Watari can replace them with new white ones. That should be an ordeal of three days, at the maximum. Three days of the cold shoulder, vitriol-injected ranting to Misa, dirty looks, and silences laced with unnecessary tension.

He doesn't mind very much, though.

The green matches the color of her eyes, which, whether she's angry with him or not, is rather pleasant (although the raging purplish-red in her face tends to obscure it).

Sometimes one brief moment of absent-mindedness is all it takes.

_**END**_


End file.
